Arthur - "Popular Girls/Buster's Growing Grudge"

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tonyayo121

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:) After pulling the episode from the last few Season 3 Arthur cycles on the PBS Kids feeds, the Chicago Arthur station (WTTW Chicago) finally aired the Season 3 Arthur episode "Popular Girls/Buster's Growing Grudge" on April 5, 2006 at 5 PM Chicago time without doing a "Sugartime" (Postcards from Buster controversial episode) by replacing it the last few times "Arthur Rides the Bandwagon/Dad's Dessert Dilemma"! ;)
 
I remember when I used to watch this show, then they started getting ridiculous around 2001. I tried to sit through it later on, but found the re-shaping of characters to be just too much. That's when I stopped watching.

Anyway, about the episode: It was pulled? Strange, I never heard of this. I saw it many times for years ago. That really was a great episode. :)
 
> And what was so controversial about a Postcards From Buster episode? <

It profiled a family with two mommies.

(BTW: "Sugartime" refers to their being maple-syrup makers.)
 
And there's ANOTHER show I don't get. "Arthur". BLEAAHHH! He's an aardvark and he doesn't even have a tail?

What kind of aardvark doesn't even have a tail? Cerebus had no soul, but at least he had a TAIL!!!

For a long time I thought "Arthur" was a hamster. Which is to say: the character design on "Arthur" is beyond lame. Only in the realm that welcomed "Barney" could such a colorless character prosper.

"Sugartime", eh? With "two mommies"? I predict a high rating from the 18-49 male demographic for THAT episode. :D
 
They're humanoid animals. Anthropormorphic. It's creepy, but yet endearing. :shrug: The writing on the show is pretty clever, as about half of the staff used to write for SNL.
 
In the first book he did look like an anthropomorphic aardvark. Of course he also looked ugly as sin so I guess the creator decided to revamp his design to make him look more appealing.
 
Nothing. It was actually pretty funny:

You see, it starts of with Francine and Catherine mixing up their bags on their way to school (they have identical ones) so when they left Francine found that she had the wrong one. When they looked inside she found a magazine called 'Popular Girls' and realised that it much be a "teenage magazine". They took one of those tests where scores you get a certain score for whatever question you answer, and Fern and Sue Ellen found out that they were "too quite" and "too outspoken", so obviously then they act all ridiculous to iron out their "flaw" and in the end the usual "we liked you the way you were before", and yadda yadda yadda from their friends.

Brain: "Is that Popular Science?!" *looks at cover* "Oh, nevermind..."

It was very funny, especially the chaos they caused throughout the school 'cause they were working on a project.

Buster's Growing Grudge is about Buster telling Binky a joke he was going to use for his report, but Binky goes and tells it to the whole class. He finds out that Binky got a C while he got an F (or was it a D?) and he blamed it on the joke saying that it got Binky a higher grade. It was hilarious at the time, and probably still is.

Of course, I'm going to tell you that that was by far the best season of the show IMO. Quite fitting seeing as it all fell apart afterwards.
 
I remember one ep. where they basically took jabs at their own concept by watching a show featuring animals in human lifestyle, and they were like, "what type of animal is he supposed to be, if they're animals, why do they have pets, etc.?"
 
The Arthur episode "Popular Girls" even features a sequence where Mr. Ratburn teaches Karate where Buster flips over Sue Ellen and Fern gets revenge by flipping over Buster. (I even like Fern's imaginary sequence of her being somewhat transparently invisible in Mr. Ratburn's class and another part where Binky was not getting up or out of the horse's head while Prunella, Molly, and Rattles work on the Trojan horse project.)

The Arthur episode "Buster's Growing Grudge" is famous for Buster's "I Want My Mummy" joke borrowed by Binky and Buster portraying a stand up routine in the school talent show but losing to George and his pogo stick talent show act.
 
I originally read the title as "Popular Girls/Buster's Growing Bulge" and now I wish that that was the real name. Also chiming in to say that that nose stuff is really interesting.
 
Well, I do like anthro toons - in fact I'm surprised there are so few out there on TV right now, given their popularity at the movie theatres. But some anthro is more compelling than others. When the anthro animal still has retains some of its animal identity - as when Bugs Bunny, although a talking rabbit, still lives in a hole in the ground - then it's fun. The critter is still one step removed from being fully human, and that to me makes it endearing. But when the anthro is so fully humanoid that it lives in the suburbs, wears pleated pants, and is in fact missing body parts that define its animal identity - that's when it's creepy and IMO pointless. If an animal character is interchangeable with humans then why make it an animal at all? There's no longer any charm or appeal to it. It's so homogenized it's bland. But that's JMHO.
 
The joke Binky did was stolen from Buster. So Buster had to do a new joke: "What do you call 2 banana peels? A pair of slippers."
 
It will be the week of May 15-19, 2006 and the week of May 22-26, 2006 PBS Kids will air new Arthur episodes for its 10th. season, but the second season of 10 new Postcards from Buster episodes (after the show was in the backburner following the "Sugartime" incident of 2005) won't begin until Fall 2006.
 
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